


Are you dead? Sometimes I think I’m dead

by junebugtwin



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Bad Parenting, Depression, Dissociation, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Isolation, Lesbian Vanya Hargreeves, No Incest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Self-Harm, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Thoughts, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Vanya Hargreeves-centric, fuck that dude tho, obviously, poor little ghost girl, vanya is mad traumatized, vanya's really goin' though it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:07:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26946415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junebugtwin/pseuds/junebugtwin
Summary: Seven is not supposed to exist, which is fine, because a ghost can't cause the end of the world.Her siblings go about the rest of their miserable lives, and Vanya, who is there as much as she isn't, can only watch.For the most part.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 86
Kudos: 310





	1. It's so easy to lose a child

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time writing for this fandom, so hopefully it's up to snuff! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this admittedly weird au in the comments!

She kills three of her nannies- she’s four and she doesn’t really know what death is, her father certainly never attempted to explain it to any of them in any sort of moralistic sense- but these women had hopes and dreams and futures. They had loved ones and pets, and strangers who would absently miss them on their shared bus routes.

Her father frowns his ever present frown, and simply hires a nanny that can’t be killed.

One day she doesn’t concentrate her energy enough- the song and the sound boil out of her like a pot of noodles set to too high a temperature, and she shatters every single glass in the nearby vicinity, including his monocle.

He gets a cut on his cheek- small and deep and superficial- no worse than what his children suffered daily.

It is only _then_ that his ever present frown morphs into real anger, real _fear_ \- it’s only then that Seven gets taken down to the bunker beneath their houses shitty foundations, pushed into cage made of steel and eerie soundproof black spikes.

He keeps her down there for months, and tells her siblings she is sick. And she is sick. She shakes with fear and panic, her breathing frequently spikes erratically until she cannot bear to gulp in anymore frantic breaths and faints. Seven sweats so much she has to take most of her heavy uniform off, and she screams in that soundproof room for so long her voice fades into a wobbling hiss.

Most days she cannot even move, contorted into a small shivering ball, curled in a corner. If she had ever been introduced religion she might have prayed, as it is all she could have done was feverishly hoped for salvation- and if not salvation, then destruction.

More than once she imagines the house toppling around her, brick and steel and concrete collapsing, pipes bursting, with her stupid father caught in it all. In these dreams she dies too, but it’s not so much outright suicidal as it is realistic- she wants this house demolished and she’ll put up with whatever side effect that may have.

(She does not consider her siblings safety in this matter, but then, four year olds are not known to be particularly good at planning _or_ vengeance.)

It is telling that the dreams where her father comes down and releases her, apologizes, are a less common occurrence- after all, she’s a child, not an _idiot_.

So it’s a bit of a shock when the vault door creaks open, with not just her father’s dimly lit presence, but her sisters.

Three is not anymore pleased to be there than her father was, if for completely different reasons. 

Her father nudges her forward, and with his voice that warns of dire consequence if disobeyed, commands her to get to work.

Three hesitates, looking at her tiny sister, made even tinier curled up like a wounded dog, her undershirt and bare feet giving way to pale sickly skin. The hesitation itself speaks of more loyalty than most adults possessed in their bodies, considering the punishment that would undoubtedly befall her were she not to do as told.

What she is supposed to say is this: ‘I heard a rumor you didn’t exist’ a convenient way to test out the extent of Three’s powers, and get rid of Seven without dear old Reggie having to get his own hands dirty.

But Three does not want her to not exist- Seven may be moody and boring and occasionally aggressive, but she is her sister, and she giggles when she plays with Four and smiles so widely when her and Three braid each other’s hair, and she loves to watch birds and is just small enough that Three’s own relatively diminutive hands dwarf hers.

So instead she says this:

“I heard a rumor we thought you didn’t exist.” Not the perfect solution, but much more clever than the average four year olds improvisational skills. Their father does not notice the slight difference in the words, as he subscribes to the somewhat arrogant philosophy that a tree does not fall if it is not heard or seen falling, and thinks the job to be done as soon as young little Three’s eyes fuzz up with confusion, and she asks him cautiously why she is here.

But no more does the desert cease to exist when the ostrich sticks its head in the dirt, than does the unheard, unseen tree, and so things do not exactly go as planned for him- though it will be far too late by the time he realizes it.

(After all, there is a world of difference between “you don’t” and “we thought”)

* * *

Seven wakes up one day, and decides to give her eternal prison a cursory glance, just for old time’s sake, and is shocked to find her vault door ajar just slightly.

(There’s no need to keep a ghost locked in)

She merely stares for a minute, oddly blank, before she scrabbles towards the entrance, her frail legs clumsy with disuse.

She stops before exiting however, hands coming up into fists as a panicked thought occurs- _what if this was a test._

It wasn’t an unreasonable thought- her father was a cruel man, and even harder to please at that- he seemed to enjoy in that bizarre lifeless way of his, when his mock children struggled to achieve his hopeless goals.

Of course, her thought at the time was more along the lines of: What if fathers giving me a chance to make up for hurting him! What if I can prove I’m a good girl and I can do what he says just like Number One!

So she slinks bank, inches away from a freedom she so desperately wants to clutch in her hands, and she waits.

And waits.

And waits.

It’s a bit easier now- when she can breathe a little more clearly, when she can look out the door and do more than pretend an outside world exists. She can hear things now- the creaking and groaning of their house, the occasional splash of rats tracking their way through the damp corridor between here and the elevator.

Eventually, she cannot wait any longer- her stomach growls and pinches and aches with hunger, which until now had not been a problem, as Mom had come down and cheerfully fed her, ignoring her anger and her protest, and sobbing and begging- smiling that perfect blank way she did when she was fighting her programming, when her orders conflicted with the heart she did not have.

But Seven has disappeared from the memory of all those who would know her, and Grace has been fixed to no longer recall her.

(That does not mean she doesn’t occasionally tilt her head at the empty spot at the end of the dining room table, that she does not occasionally find herself stood quietly in front of the room small enough to be the closet it’s supposedly is, feeling _wrong_.)

So seven takes her first terrified step out onto the damp concrete, bare toes freezing without the shoes she abandoned months ago.

She waits in abstract horror for the alarms to blare, for her father to grab her shoulder harshly enough to bruise, to scowl and snap ‘Number Seven-!’ in the way that instinctively raises her heartbeat to a fever pitch and her eyes to snap closed.

A nearby light pops and shatters under her emotional torrent, free to interact with a world that actually contains sound for the first time in what feels like forever- but her father does not magically appear behind her.

Quietly, feeling like she’s breaking every rule conceivable- she sneaks through the leaking hallway, not minding the slime or the roughness of the stone underneath her feet, taking pleasure in the pressure and sensation, and sweet, sweet _sound_ of it all.

When she reaches the elevator she has to stand on her tip-toes to press the button, and gasps in outright surprise when the door opens with a ‘Ding!’ the loudest noise she’s _sure_ she’s ever heard.

The trip up is uncomfortable- the closed in space looming around her shoulders like a physical weight, slowly crushing her to the ground, and she hums lightly to herself to help ease the sensation.

When she leaves, when she actually approaches the ‘normal’ parts of the house, she can nearly not believe it. The squeaky floorboards and the brown red walls and the creepy pictures lining them- they had once seemed so familiar to her, and now they are alien, revolutionary.

She wonders briefly, how long she had really been in that cage, for things to feel this way. She hopes only weeks.

She sneaks as quietly as she can, using her slight frame and bare feet to her advantage. All she needs is to eat and drink, and then she can go right back into the cage, and as long as she avoids the cameras, father will never even know!

She’s not sure exactly why Mom hadn’t come down with food again, but it was probably something normal, like she needed an extra-long time to recharge or she got all weird and glitchy again, like that time father slapped Five in front of her, but she’d be back soon. Seven just needed a little something to tide her over.

So she creeps into the kitchen, and she pours herself the most careful glass of water she can manage, gazing with wonder out the windows as she drinks. It’s nighttime, which explains how (relatively, _relatively_ , **_relatively_** ) quiet it was right now.

She has to crawl onto the counter to grab peanut butter for her PB&J and nearly dies of a heart attack when the cabinet door squeaks when she opens it. She waits perfectly still, barely daring to breathe for a few moments.

Thankfully, nothing comes of it, and she takes the precious steps to erase her evidence by washing her dishes and putting them away.

She even swipes any stray crumbs onto the floor, where they blend in much better with the usual dirt and dust, and will inevitably end up cleaned by Mom tomorrow anyway.

And then she makes her perilous journey back down to the dark, and walks back into her own personal hell before she can contemplate otherwise.

* * *

This goes on for three days before she is caught.

It’s morning this time, which makes this riskier, but all her siblings were out on a mission so she figured she be fine if she was careful.

Her route to the kitchen is perfect now, sliding gracefully away from the cameras and avoiding all the loudest floorboards.

So it’s really not her fault when she turns a corner and nearly slams into Two. She freezes, instinctively pushing herself against the side of the hallway, despite knowing it’s useless, and stares up at him.

Two is not her favorite sibling, she doesn’t hate him or anything, but they rarely seek each other out. Still, maybe if she really begs she can get him to keep quiet- or cry! Crying always worked on Two.

Two moves past her without a word, eyes not even flickering her way, gait not even pausing.

He sighs somewhat dramatically and grumbles “I’m not even that sick.” to himself before moving out of sight.

Seven watches him leave with utter disbelief, an unsettling feeling running over her body and raising the hair on the back of her neck. He hadn’t even _looked_ at her.

Suddenly uncaring of noisy floorboards on camera angles or quietly muffling her steps she races after him, nearly slipping on the floor in her haste. He’s in his room, because he’s sick, and can’t infect the rest of them- and she doesn’t care at all because she’d much rather take a cold- she’d much rather _throw up_ than- than-

She opens his door, and he does glance up at that, seemingly looking straight through her, before shrugging and going back to his rock collection, which is really just dumb grey rocks he picked up from their driveway- but-

“Two?” She asks, and it comes out quieter than she intended, rough and wobbly and she hasn’t spoken words since she lost her voice months ago, so she clears her throat and repeats herself much louder.

Two doesn’t react.

Maybe if it was Four, she’d think he was pranking her, and maybe if it was Three, she’d think she was getting the silent treatment. But Two is Two and inherently protective and irritable, and there is no situation she can think of where she calls his name and he doesn’t respond with either concern or annoyance.

She shakes him, and he rocks back and forth with her, humming slightly, like it was his idea all along to move. She screams in his ears, waves her arms. Nothing.

She expects to get at least some sort of reaction out of him when she snatches up one of his stupid rocks, because if she’s invisible then the rock should be floating right? But he doesn’t even glance up.

It reminds her of Mom suddenly- of how she’d sometimes just ignore things or not respond or stared out silently at nothing.

Seven burst into tears.

(No one cares.)

* * *

She doesn’t give up instantly of course. She does all sorts of things- draws on Fives precious white board, walks brazenly into her Fathers study, yells at the mandatory quiet of their shared lunchtimes.

She even considers that she might have died- as much as that thought scares her, and she attempts to contact Four for several days.

The response is the same in every scenario. _Nothing_.

She considers leaving, going out into the outside world she is so unaccustomed to- but she is four and scared and oh so alien- she has never been past her yard, never been in a car, never eaten at a restaurant, never walked across a street or brushed past a single stranger- she’s never _met_ a stranger, other than her robot mom.

So she stays, and she shrinks, and becomes more invisible every day.


	2. Seven steps to not being a person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People seemed to like my last chapter, so I thought I'd write some more! Next chapter I might do another characters POV, depending on how I feel. I hope you enjoy! :) Feel free to ask me any questions, or just chat me up in the comments!

Seven stands in the middle of the living room and screams at the top of her lungs, voice cracking and breaking painfully with disuse. She hops up and down on the couch, throws a pair of Ones shoes at a wall, tears at the stupid pictures on the stupid walls, the ones that are supposed to show them how to defend themselves. She’s always hated them, for reasons she can’t quite comprehend.

No one reacts. One doesn’t even look at his clumsily tossed shoes until a day later, when suddenly he spots them, frowns, and hurries to put them away properly, looking over his shoulder the whole time, afraid to be caught by Father. Pogo mindlessly replaces the ‘instructional’ pictures, not even seeming to wonder _why_ they were torn.

She parks herself in front of Six, blocking his way in the hall, and even though she sort of expects it, she can’t help the sharp stab of hurt that rises in her when he pushes into her. He catches her off guard enough that she loses her balance, landing painfully on her butt as she stares wide eyed at her most gentle brother.

(Somewhere outside the storm that’s been howling all week intensifies.)

She bursts into tears right then and there- because it’s one thing for Two to ignore her and One to brush past her- those two have always been in their own little world, striving to be the best, both so desperate for Fathers affection. But Six- despite his power- is kind, sometimes painfully so. None of them can stand being angry at him for more than a few minutes at a time, and she’s never seen him snap at somebody who didn’t _really_ deserve it first.

Six would never push her. She tells herself this over and over again even as she sobs, chest heaving dramatically and eyes aching with the force of her grief. Six would _never_ , he would never, he would never, _he would never_. Because he’s her brother. Because he _loves_ her.

Six walks past her, humming softly to himself.

(doesn’t he?)

* * *

She’s not Five or Three, who she thinks would have an easier time figuring this whole thing out- but there are rules…maybe. She thinks?

It’s hard to tell, because she’s really not sure _why_ this is happening at all- it’s like trying to figure out one plus one when you only speak Russian- she has no idea where to even start.

She knows ghost are real, because that’s Fours whole _thing_ , and Father would never let him get away with making up a power- even if she thinks Four is probably lazy enough that he would lie about that if he thought he could get away with it. But she’s not a ghost, because Four doesn’t react to her any more than the rest of them do, and also because she can’t float through walls.

Also, she doesn’t remember dying, but then, she doesn’t think it’s impossible either. Maybe Father forgot about her, or decided she wasn’t worth it, and told Mom not to feed her anymore and she starved to death. It’s sort of a grim thought, but for some reason she finds it much less upsetting then Six shoving her had.

But she’s pretty sure dead people don’t still need to eat and sleep and go to the bathroom. So.

Seven sighs warily, lying on the kitchen floor, under the dusty old table, beside the company of her siblings identically clad feet. She watches Four fidget in his seat, shoes seemingly inches from coming off of his feet at any moment. Two and Five both are incapable of sitting totally still. Three has a nervous tick where she smooth's down her skirt. Six rubs the flat of his thumb against the grain of his chair, and she realizes she has no idea if he does that all the time or if he’s anxious. One’s legs seem to tense up at random intervals. Her Father stays perfectly still as he neatly consumes his breakfast to the dulcet tones of this week’s radio session.

Seven wonders a little wistfully what she does while she eats- if she has any weird little ticks or idiosyncrasies that she doesn’t even notice. She supposes she’ll never know, now that there’s no one to watch her.

She wants to know why her siblings haven’t asked her Father about her. She can buy One or Six staying quiet because they don’t want to occur Fathers wrath, but what about Five? He was her best friend- and really, wouldn’t he want to know what happened to her, even if he can’t see her now?

She doesn’t spend a lot of time with One or Two or Three- but if they went missing for—however long it was she was missing, weeks or months, she has no idea- she’d be worried about them! They were her siblings, and even though they were loud and annoying and sometimes they fought they were supposed to love each other. Right?

She closes her eyes and presses her head into the cool floor, listening to the clink and clatter of forks scrapping plates.

* * *

For a while she just wonders around listlessly. She reads books, tries to keep up with homework, eats, and occasionally practices with her powers. It doesn’t really matter what she does, it all feels so _empty_. She can’t help but wonder what the point is, of flipping through old yellow pages or pacing these well-known halls, when nothing she does will ever matter.

She spends one day on the living room couch, idly watching the ancient grandfather clock tick back and forth. She’s lying on her stomach, in a weird state of being where it feels sort of like she’s floating and sinking at the same time. Her head is fluffy and airy and almost dizzy- but her chest is heavy like someone poured oatmeal flavored cement down her throat.

The clock never speeds up and it never slows down, and it doesn’t matter whether or not she daydreams or naps or stares at it tick with all her focus. Because she doesn’t matter. Maybe she never mattered. It’s a haunting thought, but she doesn’t particularly care, or maybe she does and she just can’t tell between the heavy awful thing pining her down and the never ending exhaustion that pulls at her limbs.

The day turns into night at an agonizing pace but also in no time at all. She watches blurrily as the shadows climb up the wall, feeling like she was simply part of the room- an extra miserable piece of furniture with no particular use.

The Umbrella Academy has dinner and goes to bed, and Mom goes to charge and if she looks out of the corner of her eye she can see that it’s pitch black outside. She’s tired, but not enough to sleep, not with how she’s been napping on and off all day. She’s hungry, thirsty too- her throat feeling like sand under her tongue and her stomach cramping uncomfortably like that one time Father made them all stand perfectly still for hours ‘to test your control’ or whatever. She has to pee, and laying on her stomach like this isn’t doing her any favors in that regard.

She doesn’t get up.

She just…lays there. All night long. When the sun starts to shine and birds start to chirp outside she gets a creeping feeling- it’s unnerving, but only because the feeling is that she should feel _more_ unnerved. She just did basically nothing for an entire twenty-four hours and then some- that- that was a bad sign right? She’d never done…well, she’d never done ‘nothing’ for a whole hour, never mind a day.

She silently imagines getting up, pictures her arms moving up like a great slumbering beast finally rising from the water, her bare feet touching the moss soft carpet. She visualizes going to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen- eating an apple, popping an orange slice into her mouth. The sight of water, even in her mind, makes her swallow longingly.

But then what. Once her bodies base needs were filled then what? What did she have going on that was any better than working on molding herself to this couch?

Seven closes her eyes, eyelashes like razors on her sore skin.

* * *

She gets up four hours later and sprints to the bathroom, because despite mentally wanting to dissolve into couch cushions, she wasn’t willing to _physically_ live with peeing her pants.

* * *

After that she makes goals, eats three meals a day, keeps herself at least vaguely busy even as she inwardly acknowledges that there really isn’t a point.

At first she just tries to keep up with her homework, or even read everything in the library- but that proves to be almost as boring and soul-crushing as watching the clock tick by.

Of course, there’s really not much to do other than those things, and so in some ways it was only inevitable that she go to certain lengths to keep herself at least mildly entertained.

So she sets a schedule. Monday is One, Tuesday is Two, Wednesday is Three, Thursday is Four, Friday is Five, and Saturday is Six. Since there’s seven days of the week and she doesn’t count as a person anymore Sundays are Moms.

Everyone gets their own day, and she spends the entirety of the day following them around. She steals one of Fathers empty note-books- (he wouldn’t miss it, that man had an absurd amount)- and carefully separates it into Seven sections, each neatly labeled and color coded.

(One is highlighter orange, Two is an intense red, Three is a dazzling yellow, Four is bright pink, Five is navy blue, and Six is a soft green.)

She writes any and all information she can on her siblings, feeling like a detective trying to uncover a mystery, or maybe a researcher studying zoo animals. Or maybe Father- with his stupid red book- though she doesn’t like to think about that. No detail is too small to put in the book, from the way Five yawns like he’s a lion about to bite something, to the small scars on Three’s fingers that she’s never noticed before.

It becomes routine- calming, in a certain way.

Mondays are incredibly boring and slightly stressful. Her opinions about One have always been mostly ambivalent to slightly irritated, and spending a whole day with him tests her patience.

It’s not like he’s actively annoying or anything, it’s just that he’s so… well. It’s hard to describe- she’s never really put it to words, even within the privacy of her head. But if she had to explain it, it would go something like this; Father has lots and lots of rules, for every little thing they do- from how they tie their shoes to how they’re supposed to sleep at night. But it’s common knowledge- or at least she thought it was- that there were some things you could just ignore, as long as you were quiet about it.

Personally seven had been guilty of folding over the corner of book pages to parts she liked- it wasn’t like Father ever even looked inside them after all. She knew that Four liked to go bare foot in his room, and she’d briefly seen glimpses of the holes in Two’s walls, presumably from the knives he wasn’t supposed to be throwing.

But One just… _didn’t_. He slept staring straight up, hands at his sides, somehow managing to look more robotic than Grace when she charged. He set his alarm for the exact proper time, and did his stretches every morning, and sat at the table in his spot carefully until the rest of them arrived for breakfast.

She rarely if ever saw him do something even mildly against the rules, and when he did he always had this agonized look on his face, like Father could smell the disobedience all the way from his study. 

She began to understand why he always got all constipated and bossy whenever anyone else slacked off or goofed around- she’d always thought he was laying it on a bit thick, but no, he really _was_ that scandalized.

She felt a little bad for thinking it, but she didn’t know why Three spent so much time with him. She did most of the talking, and she almost always had to either wheedle him for days or rumor him to get him to do anything fun.

Seven had always wondered what it was that Three and One were always bent together talking about, but it turned out that the answer was mostly ‘really dumb stuff’. They talked about whether tigers or lions were better (One said lions and Three said tigers) or who they thought would win in a fight between Six and Five (They both said Six, which she personally disagreed with.), or what their favorite color was (One said either blue or orange, Three said purple).

Admittedly, their friendship was kind of sweet, even if she didn’t really get it. Obviously Three liked the attention, and neither of them wanted to be lonely, and maybe that was really all there was to it.

Still, even though Mondays were mostly boring, they did make her like One more. One was kind of awkward, and bossy, and stiff- but he really _did_ care about the rest of them. If one of them got injured during training he’d pace outside the hall, or in his room, nervously squeezing his pillow and looking in the direction of medical like he could see through walls. He’d shout at Two for breaking the rules but then try to excuse or rationalize his behavior when their Father was interrogating him about it. It was clear he didn’t really get most of them, but he tried- and part of her burned a little painfully at the thought that she’d never _really_ appreciated it while she still existed.

She thought Tuesdays would be interesting but they got repetitive _fast_. Two did pretty much the same thing every day, which she supposed could be said for all of them, but he was probably the worst offender other than One. Once he got focused on something it was like it was all he cared about- and unfortunately for him, his current goal was to become the best of the Umbrella Academy. It was an unachievable goal in more ways than one. Firstly- he wasn’t beating One any time soon. One pretty only much had his spot as leader going for him, and he spent all his time making sure he didn’t mess up- even at his most stubborn, Two still had other stuff going on. Plus, though he was technically second Seven wasn’t convinced that Three wasn’t secretly the leader of the Umbrella Academy. And a fight between Three and Two would only ever end one way.

So two was kind of miserable in a way that was frustrating to watch. He was like a tiger in a cage, pacing and deadly but destined for a life stuck in the same bars he always was.

He trained a lot, and she went in to watch him up until she accidentally got in the way of one of his shots and his knife cut a deep gash in her shoulder. That had been an exciting day, and a very good lesson about finding something else to do while her siblings trained of went on missions. She’d also ruined a perfectly good shirt.

She liked it when he spent time with Four and Six, because he was a much more pleasant person to be around when he wasn’t constantly angry and posturing. She’d always known he was protective to some extent, but it was another thing to see him around them, fretting over Six’s bandages and sending worried looks to Four.

Watching him fight with One, by contrast, was like scooping her eyeballs out with a potato skin peeler. The two of them were both so similar it hurt- both lonely and desperate to be seen as worthy, and yet somehow that never stopped them from almost coming to blows over the pettiest things she’d ever seen. She now understood why Three was constantly rumoring them to shut up- she’d be tempted to as well if their positions were reversed.

Wednesdays were fascinating. Three was like Five in that she seemed to have bigger goals than just surviving the Academy, but unlike Five she actually wanted to renter into society. Every time they came back from a mission her eyes would sparkle, even if she was covered in blood or hurt, grinning at each little detail she’d noticed while they were out in the real world.

Plus, unlike the rest of them, her powers made it easy for her to get civilian items- stuff that Father defiantly did not allow, like makeup and magazines and teddy bears.

Three was sort of the family expert on the outside world, though Seven thought that she’d still probably be weird compared to most people, she seemed the most equipped to actually survive without Father- as crazy as that concept was.

Though there was something a little frantic, a little desperate, about Three. She was so determined to get out one day, like she couldn’t’ bear to imagine a life where the Umbrella Academy was her only option. And she wasn’t nearly as perfect as Seven had thought she might be- she had an explosive temper, and she was spoiled- which she vaguely knew- but sometimes after she turned her light off Three would curl up into a ball and just…cry. Huddled all by herself on her big bed, tears soaking the sheets and small body shaking absolutely silently.

The first time Seven had seen her that way she’d crawled in bed with her, wrapping her arms around her only sister and pressing her face into her hair. Of course, it hadn’t done anything, but Seven couldn’t just sit around dispassionately watching Three sob.

Thursdays were fun. _Four_ was fun. Which she sort of already knew, but it was different seeing up close. Four never seemed to do the same thing twice, a way to stave off the boredom probably, and it seemed to work at least moderately, even if it got him in trouble more often than not. Seven was certainly grateful for the constant entertainment.

He hung out with pretty much all of his siblings, but spent the most time with Six and the least time with One. Back when Seven was a person he’d even played with her, and she’d always considered him ‘hers’ with Five and Six. Spending time watching him made her heart ache horribly, but in some ways it was nice to feel something, even if it was just pain.

Four was also in the habit of talking to thin air- well, it looked like thin air to her, but presumably it was ghosts. Normally he just said stuff like ‘leave me alone!’ or ‘Shut up!’ and when they got really bad he’d put his hands over his ears and let out a high pitched whine, like a dog in distress. Seven would move around him in a circle, waving her hands like she could shoo away the ghosts just by flapping her arms. It was a little foolish, and she probably looked stupid- but it wasn’t like anyone could see her anyway.

Four also stole a lot from his siblings, more than she suspected he would. It was kind of funny. Most of it was Three’s stuff, and looking around his room she’d found out, somewhat sadly, that he’d never stolen anything from her. But then, her room was tiny, it wasn’t like she had really _owned_ anything anyway, back when she was alive.

She liked watching him and Six bicker and wrestle with each other, but sometimes watching them laugh together made her feel so jealous she had to leave the room before her powers broke another lamp.

She expected to like Fridays, because Five was her favorite brother, and she loved him an incredible amount. Weirdly, they ended up being torturous. Firstly, watching Five go about his routine with a hole in it where she was supposed to be felt like swallowing thumb tacks and hot glue- when he was angry or sad she wanted desperately to be there to lean on, to let his guard down around.

It was almost worse when he was happy. He’d laugh his dry little cackle and his eyes would scrunch up, and she’d stare and stare and stare, feeling numb.

On the worst of those days she’d feel even more separate from the world than she already did, like she was swimming through thick molasses, the world hazy and muffled, her footsteps slow and dragging. The best thing to do then was to kick herself out of it through pain, usually by punching a wall or pinching herself, but sometimes it was bad enough that she’d put herself in Ones way, or slam the door on her foot, or memorably, scratch up her own arms until she was bleeding all over the bathroom tile.

The other annoying thing about Five was that he liked to teleport everywhere. Obviously, Seven could not teleport. Which meant she spent far more time than she wanted to running up and down stairs and checking in rooms and angrily shouting his name to no one.

Saturdays were peaceful. Six was a fairly calm soul most of the time, and she’d often find herself curled up with a book beside him as he drew or wrote. If she focused on the sound of him mumbling to himself and flipping pages it was almost like before- like they were just hanging out together, enjoying the silence.

But really, she was hardly silent most of the time. She liked to keep up a constant stream of thought as she went about her day, sometimes even having whole fake conversations with her siblings. It was a good way to avoid the deadly suffocating quiet that still pierced her nightmares.

Sundays were her favorite. Grace did so much work around the house it was crazy- it turned out that it took a lot of time and effort to clean up after six and a half children, one chimp-man, and whatever their Father was, and Seven spent her Sundays comfortably busy.

Plus, it was nice to help out Grace, even if she didn’t know she was being helped. And though it was probably just wishful thinking, it always felt like Mom was more aware of Sevens presence than the rest of them.

Firstly, she never bumped into her. Even when Seven was in the way, she’d either take a different route, or just wait for her to get out of her way. She never looked at her, or spoke to her, or anything like that, but she never seemed confused that the dishes were always done quicker now, or that someone else had already chopped up the carrots.

Eventually, the nice feeling she got when helping Grace began to inspire her to do other considerate things. She’d clean her siblings rooms while they were away, find missing items, or bring them random stuff she thought they might like- like dropping a few blueberries on One’s desk. When Two went without dinner she’d leave him a cookie for breakfast, and she transferred all of her blankets to Six’s room- she knew he liked having pressure on him, especially when he was anxious. Four got all her extra skirts, and when Five got nauseous after too much of his teleportation training she’d rub his back and hold the bucket for him.

She had no idea what the others thought of all this stuff, or even if they noticed, but it made her feel better. She was nothing, but at least this was something.

And so the years passed.


	3. Zero divided by zero is still zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:) I wrote more!!

Training with Father had always been a chore, a task that usually ranged from extremely boring and annoying to worryingly stressful, but these days, Seven is really beginning to get nervous. It seems like every training session just gets worse and worse for her siblings, and the fact that she really can’t do much to help them stings especially sharp.

They don’t train together either, at least not all the time- going off on trips alone with Father (and Seven, though she hardly counts.) at first seeming almost excited, and then eventually learning to be apprehensive when their fellow siblings came back from their own sessions shaking.

Seven hates these days more than anything, often struggling to breathe in the mornings, heart pounding frantically and chest constricting into a ball of tangled thorns. She has no idea why her body reacts the way it does- she’s being selfish really, acting so upset, when it’s not even _her_ that’s going to be hurt. 

Father seems determined to test each and every one of her sibling’s limits, and then push through them, regardless of consequence.

One lifts heavy weights, and then chunks of concrete, and then he’s rolling whole tree trunks uphill, or trying to dead stop an oncoming car. That last test almost kills him, and when the full mass of the car hit’s him with a heavy crash and a fleshy _thunk_ Seven swears her heart stops as well. One flies through the air from the impact, and she struggles to make her stupid defective _destructive_ powers do something other than tear at the trees with wind and crush the car with giant invisible hands.

She uses the desperation of her own screams, the crackle of thunder in the air, the skittering of ants, the brush of the grass in the wind- and she catches him. Not with her actual hands, but for a moment he hovers in the air- just long enough to break the momentum of his fall, before her control snaps and he hits the concrete from a much more manageable distance.

She’s exhausted afterward- holding something took so much more power than simply crushing it- but she stumbles after the stretcher Mom and Pogo put One on as fast as her shaking legs can take her.

She watches numbly as Mom operates on the brother she once thought to be invincible, entire body unbearably cold and finger tips trembling at the sight of blood and bone. She feels nauseous, but in a sort of distant way, her own body foreign and unwieldy and unfeeling. When she throws up in the bathroom toilet it doesn’t even feel like it _is_ her doing it- more like she’s stuck watching her own body the same way she’s stuck watching her siblings.

That night she sleeps on the cold floor of the medical room- though ‘sleep’ may be an inaccurate word for it. Every time she closes her eyes she can see his body twisting under the force of metal, and she wonders what the point of that lesson even _was_.

That morning she gets woken up by Five stepping on her hand, which is not unusual anymore, considering that she always sleeps on the floor beside whichever sibling she was following around. Still, not exactly a pleasant way to wake up.

She expects Two’s training to be more trajectory manipulation with knives, and is unpleasantly surprised when their Father brings them to some sort of weird shooting range, set up with creepy looking turrets.

Their Father says something about how Two’s powers are more vast than he realizes, or something about potential, but she’s not listening- because she’s realized that he’s had Two stand in front of the turrets- that they are all _pointing_ at him.

She gapes from her view from the doorway, shocked despite herself- was their Father trying to _kill_ him?! He wouldn’t do something so clearly lethal right? (One’s mangled body briefly flashes through her mind, and she’s thinks- **_shit_** )

Two lets out a legitimate scream of terror when a turret begins to fire, bolting out of the way of the shot with all of his speed. Their Father is yelling something about how he has to take control of the trajectories that threaten him, but Seven’s pretty sure neither she nor Two are even remotely listening.

Two pants, breath coming out in desperate gasps, and stumbles away from a shot a little too late. The bullet rips against the flesh of his leg and Seven doesn’t even bother trying to control her powers this time- and-

The room rumbles like some angry raging beast, the walls shake, and cracks burst forth from the ground, keeping in time with her terrified heartbeat. The turrets don’t so much explode as they _crumple_ \- folding inwards on themselves, over and over impossibly, until all they are is tennis ball sized pieces of scrap metal, half melted and incredibly dense.

She stops herself, gripping her emotions the same way her Father used to grab her shoulders in training- harshly enough to leave bruises.

Her Father and brother don’t even notice the fact that the room they’re currently standing in is half destroyed, with Reginald merely scoffing and moving to call Pogo to the scene.

Seven runs to her brother, repeatedly tripping over cracks in the ground and nearly skinning all the flesh off her knees for her efforts. She all but collapses beside him, putting her own small pale hands atop his own scar covered- trying to help him put pressure on the wound. From up close she can see that the bullet skimmed the side of his leg- and despite how much it’s bleeding, and how much it looks like it hurts, it probably won’t be enough to kill him.

She tries to breathe evenly, even as she follows her injured brother back to the ground floor of the Academy- eyes widening at the sight that greets her. Apparently her use of her powers had led to a storm outside that was more akin to a hurricane, and some of the windows are smashed and shattered by flying branches or rocks. Those places are damp with the results of her torrent of rain, and her siblings are running around in a panic trying to clean up.

Later that night their Father harshly admonishes them all for acting ‘outside the dignity’ of the Umbrella Academy, and makes them go to bed without dinner. Guilt courses though her system alongside her own blood, and she curses herself with every bad word she’s ever heard Five mutter, with every mocking jibe Three had ever spit, with every hateful speech her Father had ever shouted.

She knows she deserves to go back into the room in the basement, that if she was a good person- or a _person_ at all- she’d shut herself in and waste away until she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. But she’s not, so she merely sleeps in her room for the first time in forever, hating herself with every second.

Three’s training is less severe than the others, but only because Seven is beginning to suspect that their Father is looking for _weaknesses_ in her, rather than improving her strengths. Three’s powers are amazing, they break reality in every conceivable way- and when Three murmurs a rumor that changes some poor unsuspecting victims mind- that twists and warps their personality, cracks their skull open like a raw egg and consumes the yolk- it terrifies her.

Her Fathers face remains as stoic as ever, but Seven wouldn’t be surprised if Three scared him too.

Even still, he makes her rumor people- strangers who often look dirty and gaunt, scared and desperate, but seem to be here willingly- until her voice dies, until her throat is raw and she starts spitting out blood. It’s horrible, awful, to hear her normally confident sister grow exhausted and tired and scared, breath exiting her lungs in a horrible shrill croak, eyes desperately flicking to their Father.

After what happened with Two Seven doesn’t dare use her powers to try to stop the exercise, but she always makes sure a cup of water is near her sister afterwards.

Fours training is _bad_.

The mausoleum floor is freezing cold, and the room is pitch black, crawling with spiders and smelling like old dead things. She tries to sit beside him, tries to comfort him as he screams and whimpers in the darkness, haunted by himself- but she can barely keep herself together.

In her mind the closing stone door is metal, and the cracked ancient walls are sound proof, and she is all alone, no Four and no ghosts and nothing ever again.

Sometimes she can snap out of it by hurting herself, but sometimes that just makes it worse. So most of the time, she wraps her hand around Fours and allows him to grip it like he’s going to break her- he’s not really holding her hand- he’s just trying to close his hand into a fist, and she happens to be in the way. Sometimes the illusion is enough.

She doesn’t bother to try to follow Five around for training- he’s usually made to teleport around the house so fast that she can barely comprehend it. She’s not sure what teleporting feels like, but it’s clear that doing it for so long at such an extreme pace doesn’t just exhaust him, but actively hurts him.

His nose bleeds, he complains about ringing ears, he’s constantly massaging the bend of his fingers and his elbows, like his joints hurt- he’s nauseous and dizzy often, and sometimes he can’t keep food down for the rest of the day, despite being starving.

Five tries to act like it doesn’t bother him, always trying to one up Fathers orders, do a little better, a little more than was expected. She worries that he’s killing himself, pushing like this- that one day he’ll push too far and walks through a blue portal and never walk out.

She doesn’t follow Six into training.

* * *

They all get tattoos. Their father gives a big speech about how it’s supposed to signify their superiority over the common man, how it’s supposed to unify them. It looks like it hurts.

Seven watches her siblings hold in tears, white knuckled and trembling as they’re infused with ink- branded as the Umbrella Academy’s property the same way a cow would be. She knows it’s stupid, but she can’t help the vicious envy that crawls up her spine, piercing through her skin like knives. She wants to be one of them. She wants to be alive. She wants to talk to them. She wants to suffer with them just as much as she wants to laugh with them. She wants and she wants and she wants.

She studies the mark carefully. She thinks that it’s simple enough to replicate probably. But she doesn’t have the materials for tattooing herself.

The solution she comes up with scares her, but she has to do it. It has to be permanent.

She gets it done in one night.

(She screams and she screams and she screams, safe in the knowledge that no one will hear her)

* * *

Grace gives her siblings names, but Five disappears before he’s done choosing.

Seven feels something in her break when he doesn’t come back- not the first night or the second or the third or the fifth or the eighth or the fourteenth or the twentieth or the fiftieth or the hundredth or the or the or the or t he o r th e

* * *

Four- no, agh, _Klaus_ \- its Klaus now dammit- is pretty sure his house is haunted. Which…okay, well, _obviously_ \- all houses are haunted really, and so are parks and banks and elevators. The whole damn world is chalk full of ghosts, the pesky little buggers.

The thing is, ghosts can’t interact with the real world- that’s why they’re always oh so eager to scream at him, cause’ he’s like the only one capable of responding or whatever. He’d feel a lot more sympathetic if they didn’t use their loneliness as an excuse to harass him, but such is life he supposes.

But whatever, the point was, weird shit happened in their house, weird stuff beyond just the normal child abuse violations and criminal lack of fashion sense.

He’s honestly not sure when it started, or if he can even remember a time when it wasn’t there- but it had somehow never…seemed all that strange? It was odd, but he’d never really questioned it, no matter what bullshit happened, he’d just shrug his shoulders and move on with his day.

But this morning he woke up, and he looked at the freshly washed apple on his desk and thought- _wait a fucking minute_ \- And he’d almost been late for breakfast, but suddenly the sock he was looking for was right in front of him, as if it’d been there the whole time- and at breakfast he spilled his water, but the table was dry before he could even stammer out an apology to dear ol’ dad.

And he climbed up the stairs and turned to go into his room when he caught sight of the door at the end of the hall. It was a storage closet. It was a storage closet and it’d had _always_ been a storage closet.

He stared at it. There was something like a chill, creeping slowly through his muscles, like a cold snake coiling slowly around his neck. It was just a storage closet.

He took one step forward.

It didn’t matter, it was just a storage closet it didn’t matter he didn’t care he needed to not care-

He took another step.

His head was screaming now, because no, no, no it wasn’t anything it wasn’t important it was nothing just a storage closet it didn’t exist she didn’t exist _(- -I heard a rumo -r--)_ go away turn around go _away_

He reached the door, and moved his hand up. Why was he sweating?

He was being crazy right now not enough sleep not enough drugs he should just go and sleep and get high and do something else nothing to look at nothing existing you don’t care you don’t care nothing, nothing, _nothing_

He opened the door.

Klaus blinked, shook his head, and looked again.

If this was a storage closet…then why was there a bed?


End file.
